Monday, July 2, 2012

Travails of a work-from-home mom

The art of conducting
an involved conversation with a toddler from behind a closed door. Work related
phone calls to the tune of background screeching and whining. Super quick bathroom
breaks, before your toddler who’s convinced that mommy has vanished into dark
oblivion, breaks the door down. Even quicker showers that leave you feeling
that emerging from a whirlwind might be more relaxing. Protecting your laptop as
you try and work, from pint sized elements who think tapping away at laptop
keys is an exciting form of recreation. Coffee breaks with the Teletubbies.

Sounds familiar? If it
doesn’t, welcome to the world of a ‘Work from Home Mom’.

When I first became a
mother, along with the joys of endless nappy changes and sleepless nights, I
was also introduced to the complex terminology used to classify different types
of mothers. There were SAHMs or stay-at- home moms and WOHMs or working-out-of-the-
home moms. And somewhere in between were the WFHMs, or the work-from- home moms,
whose category I soon joined.

Initially, I was smugly
satisfied about the whole work-from-home concept. After several years of killer
commutes, long hours peering at a computer screen in fluorescent light and
suffering the tasteless dishwater most office vending machines serve up in the
name of coffee, working from home felt a little like having your cake and
eating it too. With an extra cherry and frosted icing thrown in for good
measure. I would get to spend time with my daughter without giving up on work I
loved doing. Plus, with office being a hop and a skip away (quite literally),
there would be no commuting woes; I could work in my pajamas if I so wanted from
the comforts of my home and have easy
access to freshly brewed coffee.

Working from home would
be a breeze, I thought.

I was in for a rude
shock.

While working from home
has its unparalleled benefits especially when you’re a mother, it is certainly no
cakewalk.For one, there is the
small matter of getting afore mentioned pint sized elements to behave while you
try and get some work done. Given that the PSE’s are prone to unreasonable
tantrums and sudden urges to go potty, especially when you’re in the middle of
an important call, the whole work from home jig can become quite challenging.
Of course you can hire help to look after your kids, but that often throws up a
whole new set of challenges in uncharted territory. Finding good help, for one.
And then training said help to care for your kids while you work.

I remember emerging
from a seven second shower (the norm, when you’re any kind of mom, unless
you’re really lucky) once, eager to
get some work done, only to nearly step on my daughter and her nanny who were
both camping on the bathmat outside.

“We were waiting for
you to come out and tell us what to do” said the nanny matter-of-factly when I
demanded to know why my daughter was getting intimate with the bathmat instead
of doing something constructive with her time.“After all you are at home only, no?”

Being ‘at home only,
no’ can be far more difficult than getting away to an office where you can
neatly compartmentalize your home and work life. Not so much at home, where
even if you are lucky to have a somewhat secluded space to do your work in,
people always manage to find you. I made the mistake of having a dining table
office in the first couple of weeks when I started working from home. Apart
from having to share work space with the breakfast dishes, this also put me in
the precarious position of being within easy reach of my open plan kitchen from
where my rather chatty cook would feel free to strike up a conversation about the
latest skirmish in the neighbor’s house or her son’s school report, whenever
the fancy struck her.

Besides, when you are
at home, you have increased visibility of the things that you could have
happily ignored had you been away at an office. Like the dust bunnies lurking
in the corners or the pile of growing laundry. Even if, like me, you are adept
at ignoring these little housekeeping niggles, it can be tough to ignore the attitude
of assorted people who will drop in announced just because ‘you are at home’ or
call you whenever the fancy strikes them to give you elaborate updates on their
dog’s gastric condition, completely ignoring the fact that you may be trying to
get some work done.

Or people who give you
the ‘yeah, right’ look when you tell
them you work from home. As in “yeah, right,
and I’m Santa’s little helper.”

“Its okay didi, I know” my cook whispered to me
conspiratorially last week, when I reminded her for the umpteenth time to get
on with her work and let me get on with mine, instead of giving me the latest
scoop on building gossip.

“You know what?” I
asked, slightly confused.

“I know what you really do. The lady on the 9th
floor in whose house I work said that there is no such thing as ‘work from
home’. She said you must be just doing some time pass on the internet.”

Yes, so being a work-from-home
mom is not for the faint-hearted. And I’m not even getting started on the bad
days when schools are shut, or the children fall ill or the help mysteriously
disappear to their gaons for vague,
unexplained reasons. So the next time,
someone you know tells you she’s a work-from-home mom, give her an encouraging
pat on the back. Even better, take her out for coffee or offer to watch her
kids while she takes a luxurious ten minute shower. Trust me, she deserves it.